Atom-Surface Interactions: New Perspectives

This talk will focus on a much-improved understanding of atom-surface interactions, which include both an improved understanding of the dielectric function of important classes of materials, as well as recent advances in the understanding of multipole corrections, which will be presented at the conference. On the side of the dielectric function, an example is given by a recent publication [Phys. Rev. B 106, 045202 (2002)] which addresses the temperature-dependent, dielectric function of intrinsic silicon and leads to a uniform description valid over wide temperature ranges. The results will be complemented, at the meeting, by new formulas for multipole corrections, as well as analytic expansions of atom-surface interactions which include distance-dependent Bethe logarithms which enter the logarihmic potentials. Applications to quantum reflection will also be outlined.